Tend The Roots That She May Grow
by skybound2
Summary: "It happens like this: Korra is broken." A quick, introspective character piece that goes AU about five minutes before the end of the Season 1 finale. So implicit spoilers up to that point.


**Title:** Tend The Roots That She May Grow  
**Author:** skybound2  
**Rating:** K  
**Characters**: Korra (Brief mentions of Jinora, Ikki, and Meelo)  
**Word Count**: ~775  
**Summary: **"It happens like this: Korra is broken."  
**Author's Note**: While _Legend of Korra_ as a whole may have been unsatisfactory to me (with the season finale even more so) apparently it was good for my muse, as she absolutely REFUSED to let me write anything else today until I gave life to this little ficlet. It's a bit esoteric, entirely introspective, and definitely AU on the ending (assume that nothing post-Katara's appearance in the finale happened). Now that this exists I thought I would share it with all of you. (Because stories are always better when they're shared, yes?) Written as a flash-fic tonight on my tablet, so this is rough. My apologies for any errors.

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**Tend The Roots That She May Grow**

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It happens like this: Korra is broken. All the parts that were fitted, angled, and aligned to make her who she was are knocked loose. Scattered to the corners of her psyche in a tangled jumble that only becomes more knotted the longer she spends trying to sort it out.

One day rolls into another, until a month - then two - lay out in a narrow path behind her, and she learns what it means to be _less_. Less capable, less certain, less egotistical, less brash, less _herself_.

She hates it.

Hates the way that it slivers over her limbs, leaving her sluggish and aching.

Hates the bitter after taste it leaves in her mouth, like that of tea that has been boiled and forgotten until it is nothing but soggy leaves in a cup of tepid water.

Hates how it _persists_, following her through her waking life and burrowing into her dreams. Leaving her weary as she trudges further along the road that now makes up her existence.

She hates it with every inch of her being, until one day she doesn't.

Until one day when she wakes feeling refreshed and open, like a great burden has been lifted from her. She hums beneath her breath, a smile on her lips as she bumps her hip against Jinora while crowding past her in the kitchen to grab a still piping hot fruit pie. The steam burns her tongue when she bites into it, the juices dribbling down her chin and hands as she nearly drops it to the floor; laughing and laughing and laughing until it hurts.

Until one day when she slips from the walls of the air temple and doesn't feel suffocated by the vast space overhead, and the water lapping at the rocky shore doesn't make her vision go blurry and her heart sick. So that when Meelo speeds past her, riding on a ball of air and sing-songing 'You can't catch me!', Ikki hot on his heels, Korra spins the air beneath her and joins the chase.

Until one day it doesn't feel so much like she is _less_ than what she once was, but becoming who she was always meant to be.

She settles down into a routine. Mornings spent in quiet contemplation, sliding into a meditative state with an ease she once thought would always allude her - but that now feels like coming home.

The afternoons are spent venturing into a city still so torn and confused by the short-lived war brought by Amon through their doors, that just her presence admist the lingering chaos is a balm. She may not be who she once was, but neither are so many others. And if she - the Girl-Who-Was-Once-The-Avatar-But-Who-Now-Maybe-Isn't - can embrace her change of fate, why can't they?

Evenings are quieter, she spends them with her mentor and his family; hers now as well in all but name. (But when has that ever mattered?) She learns to take things slow, to think before she acts. And while she may never master Pai Sho, she is improving.

At night, at night her dreams are spent learning to follow the movement of chi through each of her chakras, until the flow becomes as second nature to her as the act of filling her lungs with air.

And over time, a warm and welcoming emotion grows inside of her. It has the texture of hope and the tenacity of truth, and when it smiles through her, she feels Aang, and Roku, and Kyoshi and so many others smiling back.

She knows it to be 'peace' and she wonders at how she has never truly felt it before.

It is only then, when the day to day path that she has stumbled - seemingly forever - along, is no longer paved with brick after brick of all the things that she isn't, but instead curves ever onward built upon all the things that she _is_ and one day _will be_, that Korra raises glowing eyes onto the skyline of Republic City the voices of hundreds upon hundreds of Avatars singing in her blood. It is only then that the very earth beneath her feet rings out to her in joy, that the water in the bay roars up at her in delight, and that tunnels of flame burn ever brighter from her palms. It is only then, that she understands _why_.

It happens like this: Korra was broken so that one day she could be made whole.

~End


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